


Beautiful Defender

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Astronomy, Body Image, First Time Blow Jobs, Insecurity, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Spoilers for up to Chapter 58
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:28:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin doesn’t think he’s beautiful, the way Jean is. He doesn’t see himself the way Jean sees him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful Defender

**Author's Note:**

> [Kinkmeme prompt.](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/524.html?thread=1019660#cmt1019660)
> 
> I played with the names of the constellations and other astronomical phenomena because mindwipe could have made such name changes possible. So: “the Plough” is the Big Dipper (it’s called that in some real-world places anyway), “the Sail” is the Summer Triangle, “the Hook” is Scorpius, “the Northern Star” is, well, the North Star (Polaris), and the “Bow of Mist” is the Milky Way. The meteor showers in the fic are the Perseids.

As Jean’s hand drops to the buttons of Armin’s shirt, Armin tenses. “I….” he starts, the words sticking in his throat. He isn’t sure what he wants more, for Jean to continue, or to push Jean’s hand away.

Jean solves the dilemma for him by leaning back with a frown, not touching Armin at all now. “What, Armin.” Armin’s mouth twists and his eyes dart away. Jean takes his chin in his hand and says, “No. Look at me, damn it.” Armin obeys, feeling his face grow hot with embarrassment — and guilt. He can read Jean pretty well now, and the hurt is glaringly obvious under the sternness.

“Why do you keep doing this? You make out with me, and it’s really hot, but as soon as I try to even get your shirt off you freeze. I don’t get it, it’s not like we haven’t all seen each other naked before.”

“Yeah, I know,” Armin mutters.

“Are you… scared?” Jean’s tone softens a little. “I mean, if you are, that’s cool, we don’t have to do this, but then why do you keep kissing me like you want it?”

“I’m… I’m not scared,” Armin says. His eyes have dropped again, observing the narrow space between their bodies. The fronts of both their trousers were bulging just a few moments before. Now they’re as flat as boards.

“So…” He can tell Jean’s struggling not to lash out with anger and hurt. He feels terrible that he’s putting Jean to this test. “What’s the problem, Armin? Can’t you even tell me?”

“I—” Fuck it, he’s just going to blurt it. “I’m not Marco, Jean.”

Jean just stares at him for a moment, looking completely bewildered. Then his eyes narrow a little and he says, “Um, _duh?_ ”

 _Oh, shit, is he going to make me explain it?_ “Well… Marco was tall, he had a nice build, and…” Armin trails off. He wants to cry.

There’s a long moment of silence. Finally Jean says quietly, “Armin. That’s… not why I was with Marco. I mean, yeah, he had a nice body… but I wasn’t into him just because of that. I was into him because he was _Marco_. We were close friends before it ever got sexual. You knew that anyway, or at least I thought you did.”

Armin bites his lip. He did, it’s just that he never really thought about it that way.

“Armin,” Jean says again, easing himself back down next to him in the grass. “If I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t be here with you.”

“Yeah, I know. I just… I don’t know. You’re…” Armin swallows. “Okay. You’re really beautiful under your shirt. I like your shoulders, your chest, your belly, your back. I want to touch them… but then I think about how I look with my shirt off. I look like I’m nine years old.”

The look in Jean’s eyes shifts. There’s still hurt, but not for himself. “Ah, Armin.” He pulls Armin against him so tight that at first Armin can’t breathe. “You’re… you’re really beautiful, too.”

“What, like a girl?” Armin’s voice is muffled against Jean’s chest.

Jean sighs, and his pectoral muscles vibrate through his shirt against Armin’s cheek. “Are you gonna shoot down every compliment I give you?”

“Sorry,” Armin mutters. Jean awkwardly strokes his upper back, then just holds him for a few minutes. There’s no sound except the crickets, which are loud tonight, and the nightjars. The grass smells green and faintly sweet.

Finally Jean whispers, “You know, I really did care for Marco, and he was good to me in a lot of ways. But… he never saved my life. You’ve saved it three times.” His voice sharpens slightly. “And that is _not_ to imply I’m here out of any kind of obligation.”

“So…” Armin says hesitantly. “…why bring it up?”

“Because…” Jean trails off. He sounds embarrassed. “Well, it’s kind of hot.”

It’s not what Armin expected to hear. He looks up, befuddled. It’s too dark to see if Jean’s turned red, but his eyes are averted.

“Okay. So. Just after we got Eren back from Reiner and Bertholdt, and I got injured, you were holding me in one arm and threatening a titan with the blade in your other hand.”

“I thought you were unconscious for all of that,” Armin says, surprised.

“Nah, just most of it. I came to here and there, and … well. You know how you’re just about to die, and you get all these really dumb, ordinary thoughts? I looked up at you, and I saw you trying to protect me, looking all angry and fierce even though I knew you were scared shitless, and you looked like…” Jean laughs. “Like a fucking knight defending a princess in the old stories. And, well, my brain didn’t know what to make of it, but my dick kinda liked it. And then I passed out again.”

Armin stares at him. Then he starts chuckling too, because he’s lost track of all the moments he’s nearly been titan fodder or a smear on the ground and all he could think of was the curve of Jean’s ass, or the drink Connie owed him and he’d never get to collect on, or something just as mundane.

Jean presses his forehead against Armin’s. As their quiet laughter dies away, he says, “And … you know … okay, this is really terrible, you can totally punch me in the face and get up and walk away when I say this…”

“Go ahead,” Armin whispers, mouth still twitching.

Jean looks him in the eye, takes a deep breath, and says, “When you shot that MP down, you had the _hottest_ look on your face. Didn’t register with me for hours, because, well. But. Uh. I may have jerked off since then thinking about how you looked, snarling like that with a gun in your hand.”

Armin’s mouth hangs open. Jean looks away from him, darts a look back at him, slides his eyes away again.

Finally Armin says, “Um. Well.”

“Yeah,” Jean says. “I warned you.” He pauses. “You still, um, interested in me?”

“Of course I am. I’m just…” Armin shakes his head. Not much puts him at a loss for words, but he has no idea how you’re supposed to respond to something like what Jean’s just said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna ask you to roleplay it or anything,” Jean says hastily. It breaks the spell: Armin starts shaking with laughter, eyes tearing up. He has to throw his hand over his mouth until the fit passes. Jean watches him, smiling a little.

“So,” he finally says when Armin’s subsided, lifting his chin in one hand and looking into his eyes. Jean’s own pupils are starting to dilate again. “That’s what I meant when I said you’re beautiful. Do you understand?”

Armin’s heart catches, and a soft heat diffuses through him. “Y-yeah.”

Jean lowers his head slowly. Their lips brush together dry, once, twice, and then Armin feels the soft tip of Jean’s tongue slip into his mouth. He touches it with his own, caressing softly, opening wider to let Jean explore. Jean makes an incoherent murmur of desire and pulls Armin down against him. He’s half-hard again now, and Armin is getting there himself.

Once again Jean’s hand goes to the buttons of Armin’s shirt. He catches Armin’s eye again, his lips slightly parted, the question of permission written on his face. Armin sucks in a breath and nods. The sight of Jean’s fingers unsteadily undoing each button makes waves of humid heat wash through his belly and groin. When the shirt hangs open, Jean flattens his palm against Armin’s collarbone and slides it down over his chest and abdomen until his fingers brush the waistband of his trousers. Armin moans softly and shakily.

Jean pushes Armin down to lie on his back in the grass, then leans over him and lays his left palm flat against his chest. Armin’s ribs and muscles heave up against it as Jean undoes his trouser buttons. At the gentle tug on the waistband, Armin acquiescently lifts his hips, and he feels both trousers and underwear slide down to just above his bent knees.

When Jean takes his cock in hand, Armin closes his eyes and gives a soft, humming moan. Jean’s fingertips are as sure and nimble on his skin as they are on the triggers of his Gear and the hilts of his blades; the calluses slide over Armin’s nerve endings in just the right way to make him arch into the touch, his ass completely clearing the ground. When the warmth of Jean’s fist surrounds him he drags in a deep breath, anticipating that he’s about to be jacked off. Instead his cockhead is encompassed in wet, slick heat, and his eyes fly open as he shoves his wrist against his mouth to stifle a cry.

Jean takes him in centimeter by centimeter, neither rushing to engulf him nor teasing him by lingering. Eventually Armin’s cock is brushing against the back of his throat, lying heavy and swollen on his tongue, which Jean slides against the underside as he pulls off again to take it back in. His other hand continues to smooth up and down the shaking muscles of Armin’s chest and belly, fingers stretching out to pull at his nipples.

Head tilted back, fingers of the hand that’s not against his mouth curling into the ground, Armin stares with hooded eyes into the night sky. He registers the Plough, with the bright orange burst at the tip of its handle; the Sail, bound by its points of bluish-white light; the fiery jewel on the stem of the Hook; the golden haze of the Northern Star. He knows they burn far hotter than he does, far hotter than Jean’s mouth does, but just at the moment it seems impossible that they do.

Suddenly the sky comes alive with silver needles, coursing swift and bright across the clusters of the stars, the Bow of Mist, and the infinite blackness beyond. Needles of heat course through Armin, too, and he chokes out Jean’s name with an urgently rising inflection. Jean bears down to suck him all the harder, swallowing around his cock, fingertips pushing between his thighs to stroke his balls, and with a sob Armin arches into his throat one last time to give everything up to him.

He subsides against the grass, gasping, barely perceiving the shape of Jean looming over him before Jean lifts Armin’s chin. His own come is bitter on Jean’s tongue, and he doesn’t care because he still can’t see right and his legs aren’t going to stop shaking for a while. He hears the soft rustle of fabric and opens his eyes to see Jean upright on his knees and working his own trousers down over his hips. His cock springs out, full and stiff.

“Do you want me to—” Armin starts, the words breathy.

“No,” Jean says, gravel-voiced. He licks his palm thoroughly, almost lewdly, then slides it up and down his cock, working the pre-come over it along with his saliva. Then he’s crouching over Armin again. Balancing himself with his left palm against the grass, with his right hand he works his cock into the narrow space between Armin’s inner thighs, which are held together by his rucked-down trousers.

“Oh,” Armin whispers as Jean begins to drive and drive, holding himself up with his sticky right hand now so that he can curl the fingers of the other into Armin’s hair. Armin’s not so depleted that his own cock doesn’t twitch at the sight of Jean’s strained features up close, eyes shut and brows drawn and teeth bared, and in short order at the sound of Jean’s breaths turning to gasps and gulps and whines. Jean pulls Armin tight to him and groans into his mouth as he shakes like an aspen, and Armin can feel each spasm go through his cock. A moment later sticky warmth is running down the backs of his thighs into the cleft of his ass, and Jean is panting into the crook of his neck.

Armin strokes his hand a few times through Jean’s short spiky hair. He’s not eager to shatter the moment, but he’s a little less than comfortable. “Um. Do you have a handkerchief or something?”

“Oh. Right.” Jean raises his head looking somewhat embarrassed. “Know what, use my shirt.” He rocks back on his knees and begins to unbutton it.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Jean whispers. “I’ll wring it out in the stream.” He undoes the last button and tosses it to Armin. Armin tries to mop up as much as he can using as little of the fabric above the hem as possible. He balls it up carefully and hands it back to Jean, who gets up, pulls up his trousers, and walks away. Armin shifts out of the damp spot in the grass, about sixty centimeters to the left, then pulls up his trousers and underwear and redoes the buttons.

He’s staring again up into the darkened heavens when Jean returns ten minutes later, still barechested and with his wet shirt in hand. He tosses it over a nearby bush and lies down again beside Armin, cradling the side of Armin’s head against his collarbone.

“Look,” Armin whispers suddenly, pointing upward, as more silver needles pulse out of some immeasurably distant vanishing point to streak across the sky.

Jean cranes his neck and squints. “Those are… meteorites, right?”

“Meteors,” Armin says. “The bits that fall to earth are meteorites.” 

He thinks about how old those bits are, how they’re full of stone and iron and gemlike things that humanity has no names for. How the meteors get their color not just from what they’re made up of, but from how they burn as the air of the high skies rushes past them, because everything that comes into this world is destined to burn.

But he doesn’t say any of it, because Jean isn’t Armin, Jean isn’t even Eren, and this is perfectly fine. Instead he simply whispers, “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”, and he feels a soft huff of breath and warm lips against the crown of his head.


End file.
